Pole Position and No Tire Drama Help Team Mercedes Rise to Second Place

BUDAPEST—Lewis Hamilton was cruising home to his first victory for Mercedes Sunday, finishing the job he had started on pole position. He had joined the team last winter to escape from mediocrity and mechanical failures at McLaren and once again compete for a world title. But until Sunday, he had mostly encountered frustration this season.

So in the Mercedes garage, the final few laps at the Hungaroring here were worth savoring.

ENLARGE

Lewis Hamilton passes a group of cheering Mercedes teammates at the Hungaroring circuit in Budapest Sunday.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

At least until Nico Rosberg's engine blew out. Rosberg, Hamilton's teammate, had been five laps from the finish line when the back of his car caught fire and he had to drive onto one of the escape roads. And while it summed up Mercedes' often confounding season, it couldn't erase the progress the team has made. In five of the last six races of 2012, it failed to collect a single point. Now it sits second in the constructors' standings, behind only Red Bull.

"I think the team has made a great step forward from the second half of last season," Mercedes Executive Director Toto Wolff said Saturday. "If you would have told us we're going to score two wins and a couple of pole positions, we would have taken it."

And that was before Hamilton ended his 10-race winless streak on Sunday. It was the longest of his career, dating back to his final victory for McLaren in Austin, Texas, last November. "This is probably one of the most important Grand Prix wins of my career," Hamilton said after finishing ahead of Lotus's Kimi Raikkonen and Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel.

Though he started in pole position, the result still came as a surprise—especially to Hamilton. He was so down about his prospects on Saturday that it was almost comical to hear that much negativity from a former world champion at the front of the grid.

He didn't like his best qualifying lap: "It didn't feel that great," he said Saturday.

He didn't like the tires: "I don't have any indication that it's going to be better."

And he didn't like his chances of keeping pace with Vettel: "If we did win it would be a miracle."

Still, he had a point. In the nine races before Sunday's, Hamilton had finished between third and fifth in all but one. (The exception was his 12th place in Spain.) But what appeared on the surface as solid production was actually consistent slipping.

The Mercedes car has proven itself much quicker in qualifying than it is over a race distance, with Hamilton or Rosberg earning pole at seven out of 10 Grand Prix this year.

Three of the poles before this weekend had belonged to Hamilton. But he failed to turn any of them into a race win. In fact, his victory marked only the third time all season that he didn't finish a race worse off than he started. On average, he has lost 1.9 places per race.

"I think you could tell I was hungry for it today," Hamilton said. "I was just going all out. I needed to get past those people and usually I get stuck in traffic, generally in my races. And today, I wasn't having it. I was going for every move I had."

If Hamilton has shown consistency, his teammate Rosberg has been all over the place.

Part of the difference has been down to Rosberg's three incomplete races this season, including Sunday's flameout. Still, of the seven he's finished, he's taken the checkered flag twice, in Monaco and at Silverstone.

But perhaps the toughest circumstance for both drivers this season has been the sport's struggle with tires. Tire degradation has hit Mercedes harder than most this year, though almost every team has suffered from Pirelli's less-reliable 2013 compound. What had been simple exasperation across Formula 1 turned to outrage at the British Grand Prix last month, when several cars, including Hamilton's, suffered tire explosions.

That race prompted a safety review from Pirelli, the sport's exclusive tire manufacturer, and the result was the tire it introduced here. Combining the 2013 compound with the more stable 2012 construction, Pirelli hoped that tire degradation would stop dominating race weekend headlines.

Things didn't look promising in Budapest, where the track temperature soared to over 120 degrees Fahrenheit Sunday afternoon. But the rubber-related calamity that many had feared never materialized.

"If we come here and make our tires last, then we can do it anywhere," Hamilton said.

The victory left Hamilton fourth in the drivers' standings going into the month-long summer break with nine races left on the schedule. But it's highly unlikely he'll mount any kind of charge. The supremely consistent Vettel is 48 points ahead of him in first, followed by Raikkonen and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, who slipped further back with a fifth-place finish.

"I know the guys are working hard so we can close the gap and I hope today is the first step in doing so," Hamilton said. "But we've got a lot of tough races coming up. I just hope that that's not the last time my tires work for me."

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